THE HIGH AND THE LOW IN POLITICS: A TWO-DIMENSIONAL POLITICAL SPACE FOR COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS AND ELECTORAL STUDIES Pierre Ostiguy Working Paper # 360 – July 2009 Pierre Ostiguy, an assistant professor of political studies at Bard College, specializes in Latin American politics. He studies party systems, populism, political appeals, and political identity, with empirical research on Peronism and anti-Peronism in Argentina, and Chavismo and anti- Chavismo in Venezuela. Ostiguy’s work develops a “spatial analysis” of politics and party systems focusing on the appeals of parties and candidates (as well as their reception) rather than policies and issues alone. His articles have appeared in French, English, and Spanish in Revue Internationale de Politique Comparée, Politique et Sociétés, Revista de Ciencias Sociales, and the Canadian Journal of Political Science, among other journals. He authored Los Capitanes de la industria: Grandes empresarios, política y economía en las Argentina de los años 80 (Legasa, 1990), as well as a recent book chapter on Argentine identities and Peronist political culture. He is currently completing a book entitled “Party Systems and Political Appeals: Populism and Anti-Populism in Argentina,” to be published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Ostiguy served as chair of Bard’s Latin American and Iberian Studies program and was a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. He received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. ABSTRACT This paper introduces an indispensable dimension for the spatial and comparative analysis of party systems, cleavages, and the conduct of political campaigns. It presents the concepts of “high” and “low” in politics and the high-low dimension, which concerns ways of appealing (and thus relating) to people in sociologically differentiated ways. Politicians on the high are “well behaved,” more restrained, and proper, both in manners and institutional procedures. Politicians on the low sublimate less and are more down-to-earth, coarser, earthier, and personalistic, both in manners and institutionally. The high-low dimension is fully neutral, or orthogonal, with regard to the left-right axis, in contrast to Kitschelt’s authoritarian/libertarian divide or Inglehart’s materialist/post-materialist political cleavage. The paper also provides a solid conceptual discussion of the classic and almost universal polarity between left and right, which (like the high-low axis) is in fact comprised of two subdimensions. Together, the high-low and left-right dimensions make up a two-dimensional space of politics highly useful for characterizing certain political arenas and political strategies. The concept of “low” moreover provides a much-needed, uncontroversial, and highly intuitive definition of populism. It also brings to the fore the neglected phenomenon of anti-populism. Finally, the paper illustrates the relevance of the high-low dimension in Argentina, with its “double political spectrum” divided between Peronism and anti-Peronism, Venezuela with Chavismo and anti-Chavismo, and Ecuador. RESUMEN Este artículo introduce una dimensión indispensable para el análisis espacial y comparativo de los sistemas de partidos, ciertos clivajes y la conducción de campañas políticas. Presenta los conceptos de “alto” y “bajo” en la política y la dimensión alto-bajo, que tiene que ver con modos de atraer (y entonces relacionarse) con la gente en modos sociológicamente diferenciados. Los políticos en lo alto son “bien educados,” comedidos y “proper” (o “como debe ser”), tanto en modales como en procedimientos institucionales. Los políticos en lo bajo subliman menos y tienen menos inhibiciones, son más crudos, prácticos, terrenales y personalista, tanto en modales como institucionalmente. La dimensión alto-bajo es enteramente neutral o perpendicular en relación al eje izquierda-derecha, en contraste con el eje autoritario/libertario de Kitschelt o el clivaje materialista/post-materialista de Inglehart. El artículo también provee una sólida discusión conceptual de la polaridad clásica y casi universal entre izquierda y derecha, que (como el eje alto-bajo) está compuesto de hecho de dos sub-dimensiones. Juntas, las dimensiones alto-bajo e izquierda-derecha conforman un espacio bi- dimensional muy útil para caracterizar ciertas arenas políticas y estrategias empleadas por los políticos. El concepto de “bajo” provee además una definición no controvertida y muy intuitiva del populismo. Llama la atención también sobre el descuidado fenómeno del anti-populismo. Finalmente, el artículo ilustra la pertinencia de la dimensión alto-bajo en la Argentina, con su “doble espectro político” dividido entre peronismo y anti-peronismo, en Venezuela con el Chavismo y anti-Chavismo y, históricamente, en Ecuador. Ostiguy 1 This article identifies and introduces a crucial dimension in political competition and oppositions for the spatial and comparative analysis of party systems, social and political cleavages, and the conduct of political campaigns. This dimension concerns appeals by political actors, but it is equally useful for understanding the social reception of their political appeals and spatial positioning. While intuitively familiar, this key dimension has not previously been named and incorporated in the study of political behavior and the comparative analysis of political divides. Therefore, to characterize an important dimension that structures candidates’ political strategies and even certain party systems, this article introduces the concepts of “high” and “low” in politics. Just like the left and right poles, together they form a high-low political dimension, axis, and scale. In contrast to many other dimensions which have already been introduced in political science, such as the libertarian and authoritarian or the materialist and post- materialist ones, the high-low dimension is fully neutral, or orthogonal, with regard to the classic left-right axis. Left and right undoubtedly order most party systems around the world. Unlike other arguably orthogonal political divides such as separatism/federalism or religion/secularism, the high-low dimension is also, like left and right themselves, a manifestation in politics of social and cultural inequality. But it relates to inequality in a very different way than do left and right and in a way normatively disfavored by most scholars. Together, the high-low and left-right axes make up a two-dimensional space of politics which is highly useful for the study of political strategy, the analysis of the social reception of political appeals, and, where political differences evolved into a political cleavage, entire party systems. The empirical puzzle that furnished the early starting point for this spatial conceptualization of political arenas and actors has been the cleavage between Peronism and anti-Peronism in Argentina, observed firsthand over two decades. However, the concepts of high and low in politics travel remarkably well and are not specific to a particular case. The high-low dimension is a middle-range phenomenon. One challenge is thus to explore the conditions that lead to the emergence of arenas that are politically structured more in terms of high and low than left and right or liberal and conservative. The degree of relevance of high and low for the politics of different societies varies widely. The high-low dimension seems particularly relevant in “third-wave” 2 Ostiguy democracies. At its greatest level of relevance, the high-low axis is the dimension defining the main political cleavage of a given country, thus structuring its entire party system. In Latin America, this has been the case in Argentina for over half a century and is largely the case in Venezuela. At the simplest and most modest level, high-low political differences can be clearly observable between political candidates, but they do not structure political competition. The electoral impact is then at the margins, for example, among undecided voters or voters with no established political identities. The older, well-established party systems of Western Europe and the US have already been structured around a left-right divide broadly defined. More inchoate party systems, be they recent, the product of collapsed older party systems, or simply a result of lack of institutionalization, are a particularly fertile terrain for the development of the high-low dimension. In Ecuador for example, where no party system has yet become institutionalized but where political competition takes place in fair electoral contests, the high-low dimension has played a historic role in the alignment of political actors and as an axis of electoral competition and political preferences. Comparative political studies of electoral politics and party systems in developing countries and “third-wave” democracies will thus have to reckon seriously with this political axis. The high-low political categories fill an important gap in political analysis. To mention one instance, Peronism in Argentina was considered at the end of the Second World War to be clearly on the right of the political spectrum; from the 1960s to the 1980s, it was thought to be on the left of the spectrum and to the left of anti-Peronism; in the 1990s, Peronism was once again considered on the right of the political spectrum and to the right of anti-Peronism; in the early part of this decade, Peronism in power was again somewhat to the left of the political spectrum. With the proper analytic tools, it is